Kilo Lingo

(shí) - time, hour, when in Mandarin

shí

Traditional: 時

Line drawing of 时
Coloured illustration of 时
HSK 1
#204 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

time, hour, when

Word origin

时 is a phono-semantic compound: the sun radical 日 (rì) carries the meaning and 寺 (sì) supplies the sound. The sun ties the character to the passage of the day, which is where the senses time, hour and when all come from. The traditional form is 時.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
日 (rì, sun radical) + 寺 (sì, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 时

时

Examples

？

Do you have time?

八bā。

I work eight hours a day.

？

When are you coming?

。

I sometimes walk to work.

。

It is three in the afternoon.

时 (shí) means time, hour or when. In modern Mandarin it rarely stands alone: it is a bound morpheme that lives inside compounds, although the bare character survives in formal clock times such as 下午三时 (xiàwǔ sān shí), three in the afternoon, which is the register of timetables and news bulletins rather than conversation.

Four compounds carry almost all of a beginner's mileage. 时间 (shíjiān) is time as a quantity or a point on the clock, so 你有时间吗 (nǐ yǒu shíjiān ma) asks whether someone is free. 小时 (xiǎoshí) is an hour of duration and takes a measure word: 三个小时 (sān gè xiǎoshí), three hours. 时候 (shíhou) is the moment or stretch when something happens, and 什么时候 (shénme shíhou) is the ordinary way to ask "when?", best learned whole rather than assembled each time. 有时 (yǒushí) means sometimes and sits before the verb, not after it.

The distinction that catches English speakers is 时间 against 小时. 我没有时间 (wǒ méiyǒu shíjiān) means "I have no time"; 我等了三个小时 (wǒ děng le sān gè xiǎoshí) means "I waited three hours". English uses "time" and "hours" loosely across both jobs, and Mandarin does not.

Do not confuse 时 with its homophone 十 (shí), ten. They share a sound and nothing else.

Where this fits

The 1,000 most common Mandarin words

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Appears in 15 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 时.

什么时候shénme shíhouwhen时候shí hòutime, moment, period时间shí jiāntime (duration/point)小时xiǎo shíhour当时dāng shíat the time, at that time, then那时nà shíat that time, then有时yǒu shísometimes同时tóng shíat the same time, meanwhile, simultaneously有时候yǒu shí hòusometimes随时suí shíat any time, anytime时刻shí kèmoment, time, constantly时代shí dàiera, age, epoch, times暂时zàn shítemporary, for the time being, momentarily时间轴shí jiān zhóutimeline, time axis小时候xiǎo shí hòuin childhood, when one was little

Used in

Grammar articles

(21)

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时: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 5.